As has been my tradition in the past, I’m posting a late-night Heroes Con round-up before hitting the sack. As has also been my tradition, It’s gonna be short and pretty sloppy. Here goes:

After dragging myself out of bed at an hour unseemly for any true gentleman, I hit the road for Greensboro where I rendezvoused with my pal Rob Ullman and then packed up and motorvated Charlotte-way. Rob skipped Heroes last year–some lame thing about “having a baby” or whatever–so it was great to catch up on comics on the way down. Wait… did I say “catch up on comics”? I meant to say “talk about our kids non-stop!”

Load-in and set-up was, as usual, pretty smooth. Heroes’ reputation for being one of the best run shows around isn’t undeserved. Despite what I thought was a thorough check of people I knew seated near me for my previous blog post, I apparently totally missed that I was seated next to Christian Sager this year. Nearby were also Heroes “regulars” such as Brad McGinty, J. Chris Campbell, Patrick Dean, Josh Latta, etc. A raucous time was had by all.

Confirmed by chit-chat at the various post-con watering holes, the floor seemed unusually busy today for a Heroes Friday. Most folks chalked the extra draw up to the presence of Stan Lee at this year’s show. I didn’t expect to do much book-selling this year, given that I’ve not had a new book out in a while. Since it’s Heroes, though–easily the most original-art-centered comics event around–I kept pretty busy doing commissioned sketches. I forgot to take a pic of at least one, but here’re a few I snap pics of:

Inside jacket sketch in Amelia Earhart: This Broad Ocean

X-Men sketch cover drawing of 80s-era “Mohawk” Storm

Commander Davidson Bulloch from Oyster War

Mysterious Fanboy from the Paul Pope issue of X-Statix

It was great to meet/re-meet and talk to a ton of folks on the convention floor–particularly a number of people that I routinely yak with on Twitter but rarely get a chance to speak with in person. After the con, and after a quick dinner, I stopped by the benefit Drink-n-Draw at Fuel Pizza across the street. Having just come from dinner, I didn’t have my drawing stuff with me, but the place was so packed with people drawing that I didn’t feel too bad about it.

I spent the rest of the evening rotating between the Drink-n-Draw, the Westin bar, and “McGintyFest,” an event that was intended to be a venue for screening some of animator/cartoonist Brad McGinty’s animation, but consisted mainly of people playing Guitar Hero on a projection TV and/or hilarious “dramatic readings” of terrible comic book dialog.

As first days of Heroes con, this one was pretty damn good. See you tomorrow, folks!